The All-In-One SEO Pack and Google XML Site Map plugins are an excellent starting point. Use them both and you'll be on your way.

Andy.

If you pick a great theme like Thesis from DIYThemes.com then you don't even need a plugin. But 99% of the themes out there for WP are poorly written from an SEO perspective and require a plugin to manage the SEO elements of the site. All-in-One SEO Pack is probably the most used plugin for this purpose.

IMO SiteMap.XML files are extremely overrated. 99% of the sites that use them do not need them... it's just a waste of time. They don't get more of your URLs indexed.. They don't get your URLs indexed faster (unless it's a new site with no inbound links).

Sitemap.XMLs are useful for 3 basic situations:

1) Getting a site with no backlinks indexed
2) Helping the search engines to find all of the URLs on a site with crawlability issues
3) Sites with hundreds of thousands or millions of URLs can use them for prioritizing which set of URLs should be indexed 1st, which set of URLs should be indexed next if there is still room in the index, which set of URLs should be indexed next if there is still even more room in the index, etc. using the <priority> element.

#1 is a waste because if you have no backlinks, you're not going to rank for anything even moderately competitive. Your time is better spent building links instead of building sitemaps.

#2 should never be an issue. If you're site's not crawlable, you should be fixing your crawlability issues rather than working on sitemaps.

#3 is really the only "valid" reason to deal with maintaining and submitting sitemaps to the engines.

As my opinion All in 1 seo is the best one and also try it and Wp searchterm presenter both are good .

They all pretty much do the same thing, change Title, change Description, and do all your Meta tags. All In 1, platinum seo, just search seo in the wordpress plugin search bar and test them all out.

The sitemap plugin is great for people who do not know how to create their sitemap manually.

I would also recommend SEOPressor. However, it might put some extra pressure on your server. But it gives you tips where and how you should improve your posts.

Try Platinum SEo and Headspace2.

Platinum is basically the same as the All in One SEo plugin, but I've had some succes with it.

Headspace2 has a slightly steeper learning curve but it can do incredible things if you know how to use it.

And of course if you have Thesis, you really don't need to do much.

Good Luck

I have the Platinum SEO and Google xml sitemap. I just started my blog and have 5 pages indexed. Just my newbie experience.

All in one SEO and Permalinks are the best in my experiance.

I also use a WP plugin for Only Wire to promote my posts on social media sites

Yoasts seo plugin, it covers pretty much everything.